Historical Accuracy Fail

In an article published on 22 August 2012, Retired Vice Chief of Staff of the Army General Peter Chiarelli, told AOL Defense that "... you cannot put the IED genie back in the bottle."

"IED genie"?  I mean, General Chiarelli should definitely get bonus ridiculous points for comparing IEDs to nuclear weapons in this obvious comparison to the so-called "nuclear genie."  He doesn't get any points for any sort of historical accuracy though.

All one would have to do to see otherwise would be to pick up a copy of Malice Aforethought by Ian Jones (a great read by the way for anyone interested in this topic).  Jones' work is probably the best primer on the subject and shows the importance in post-modern warfare of mining and booby-trapping and the use of improvised munitions as a part of it. 

The term "improvised explosive device" is just a new term, conjured up for reasons not entirely clear to me, to define a class of weapons that has probably existed as long as there has been mass produced explosives.  In the past, whether built in a factory or in someone's back yard these types of weapons were called mines or booby-traps. 

Improvisation has always been an important part of such things.  The movie Saving Private Ryan made a big deal out of the "sticky bomb" and noted its inclusion in official military publications of the time.  Indeed, so significant was the US Army's knowledgebase on the topic that it published an official technical manual for its own use, entitled "TM 31-210, Improvised Munitions Handbook."  The handbook described exactly the sorts of things that were being found in these somehow new IEDs that only started appearing in Iraq in 2003-2004.  In fact, when this became more widely known some suggested that the existence of such manuals, and their wide distribution, might have given IED makers a head start in their craft.

IEDs and rear area security are hardly new concerns.  It was a problem for the Red Ball Express in Europe in 1944 and was a major problem in Vietnam for US transportation units.  Even with the almost deliberate gutting of institutional knowledge on counter-insurgency following the Vietnam debacle, rear area security, along with sabotage and other guerrilla activity, continued to be of serious concern.  Fears that Soviet Spetznas would form partisan groups to harass NATO rear areas in the event of an invasion of Western Europe were entrenched in the planning and similar fears existed with regards to North Korea in the event of renewed conflict there.  Mines were again a major threat to US and other Allied forces in Bosnia.  Even without direct experience, there was significant experience that the US would have observed, and indeed the Mine Resistance Ambush Protected and Route Clearance Vehicle programs owed much to the development of such things in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s.

It seems that lately, authorities in the United States have become concerned about Al Qaeda and other terrorists seeking to use fire as weapon.  There's some concern about the potential for arson to be used as a terrorist tactic.  There's also some concern about the use of forest fires a weapon.  It makes a certain amount of sense that these things would be of a certain amount of concern.  Fire can and often is devastating.  However, with the major strides urban firefighting capability and identifying areas prone to forest fires, is this really much of a threat?

History has shown that manufacturing firestorms in urban areas or forests is extremely difficult.  During the Second World War, Japan attempted to set fire to forests along the west coast of the Continental United States an in Alaska using both light aircraft and balloons armed with incendiary bombs.  In no instance did the desired firestorm occur.  Unlike the environment presented by Japanese cities at the time, with densely populated areas full of structures made from flammable materials, the forests did not provide ideal targets.  Lessons learned from firebombing experienced in London, and in cities in Germany and Japan had a distinct effect on post-war architecture as well.

The US also explored the use of forest fires as a weapon in Vietnam between 1965 and 1970, with much the same results.  A total of five named operations (Sherwood Forest, Hot Tip, Pink Rose, Inferno, and Banish Beach) were conducted as part of the effort, led by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA; now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA) in cooperation with the US Forest Service.  In its final report, the US Forest Service concluded that in Southeast Asia, and in general, the ability to manufacture a devastating self-sustaining forest fire was likely impossible without a perfect combination of factors.

Even if one accepts that there are areas on the United States that do have a tendency to burn (as evidenced by forest fires in the American Southwest, including ones currently raging), how would one distinguish between this and a terrorist attack if a forest fire is unlikely to occur outside of normal periods?  Could a forest fire be set if it wasn't already likely to happen?  These would be important considerations.  In addition, the communities under threat would be those already under threat.  The potential to sustain damage to personal property, and the potential for injuries and loss of life, by living in areas with a high propensity for forest fires already exists.  This would be akin to threatening the inhabitants of the Florida Keys with a hurricane. 

Some people may have heard that the defense budget is imperiled and on the verge of collapse.  Old terminology with the appropriate fear quotes, most notably "hollow force" have been coming back into the lexicon.

In the words of John Pike: "Reports of the collapse of the defense budget have been greatly exaggerated."

In spite of this, the shenanigans continue.  The House Armed Services Committee (which has seen no shame in changing the official website title to "Armed Services Republicans") has posted up a factsheet of supposed "myths" about the defense budget, with the most condescending and trite arguments used to support their conclusions. 

The HASC factsheet starts out with the suggestion that it is somehow false to suggest that "The defense budget has doubled since 9/11, so we can make more cuts."   Why not you might ask?  Well first off its because the doubling isn't really doubling.  Those numbers that the government puts out, showing that the current base defense budget is twice what it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation don't take into account that less than half of it (35%) was unavoidable, being mostly cost of living increases for personnel, active or otherwise.  No care is taken to look at how much of that increase is attributed to the massive increase in military personnel to prosecute two major theater conflicts, which was not and is not planned to continue, and therefore should be money that no longer needs to be spent.  The argument is further undermined when the factsheet itself admits that 75% of total growth, including supplemental defense spending in the last decade, can be attributed to cost of living increases and the demands of two major theater conflicts.  That suggestion made in the factsheet that a budget that is 165% larger than it was in 2000 is only adequate to support the force structure as it existed in 2000, which was significantly smaller, is mind boggling.

Blatant misrepresentation of the facts is one thing.  The HASC also did it within their "Catastrophic Impact of Sequestration" documentation, which includes these awesome graphs, which suggests that reducing funding to pre-9/11 levels is somehow the most awful thing that could possibly happen, in spite of the fact that we're no longer fighting two major theater conflicts, or even planning to. 

When senior military officials, like the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps start getting the basic facts wrong, then you have to start worrying.  General Joseph Dunford told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on military readiness that "...sequestration would kill the OCO supplemental..."  This is not how any reasonable person would describe Section 101 of the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA), which specifically exempts funding for accounts designated by Congress and the President for "Overseas Contingency Operations/Global War on Terrorism."  The Office of Budget Management is specifically required to adjust the discretionary spending limits by whatever amount is so designated when calculating to determine if a breach of the BCA has been committed.  Even if a breach is still committed, the resulting automatic cuts are applied to the base budget, and then to the base budget over 10 years.  Supplemental funding continues to be exempted according to Section 101 of the BCA.

So the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College has just published a work on Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO. In it, the "tactical" definition is applied by some of the authors in the collection to the remaining B-61 nuclear gravity bombs in Europe.  However, Steven Pifer of Brookings presents perhaps a better category, even if the title, "non-strategic nuclear weapon" doesn't really encapsulate it.  Pifer's "NSNWs" simply include everything not covered by New START or INF. 

Yesterday, Voice of America ran an article about speculation that a treaty to handle short-range nuclear capable missiles and other "tactical" nuclear weapons in Europe was in the offing between the United States and Russia. 

The United States is no doubt keen to add such a treaty to New START, seeing as the Russians have deployed a number of tactical systems in Europe, including their Kaliningrad enclave, since the US pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and began work on the current set ballistic missile defense programs.  In response to the US pulling out of that treaty, the Russians have since threatened to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and suspended its participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty.  They have have also threatened to redeploy a number of conventional and nuclear capable systems to their European borders.  While these developments have gone largely unnoticed, they are extremely important.

The problem with the VOA article is that they suggest the US has approximately 200 short-range nuclear weapons in Europe still.  Such systems have become almost entirely the provenance of the Russians since the end of the Cold War.  The United States stopped fielding and development of short-range nuclear missile systems (the last one being the MGM-52 Lance) and nuclear tube artillery rounds in the 1980s and the 1990s following the ratification of the INF Treaty.  Though not covered by INF, the US clearly deemed that the utility of these weapons in an otherwise denuclearized battlefield was extremely limited.  When the Cold War ended, the need for such weapons in Europe almost disappeared overnight.

While the US does retain a number of nuclear weapons in Europe, these are not readily classified as "tactical," almost certainly being air-launched cruise missiles (almost all with a range of over 2,000 kilometers; much more than the 500 kilometer upper end of "short-range" systems) and gravity bombs (limited only by the range of the carrier aircraft).  The US has a total of zero short range nuclear missiles in Europe.  The follow-on system to Lance is not nuclear-capable.  The remaining nuclear weapons in Europe are definitely still an issue with the various European nations where they are stored, but they would more likely than not be covered any treaty that dealt specifically with "short-range" or "tactical" systems. 

I'm not even really sure how to best title this, but the US Army-US Air Force wrangling of intra-theater airlift has finally come full circle.  Wired's "Danger Room" had this article posted up today.

What the article fails to point out is the very long history that has brought us to this point.  Its been pretty clear to the US Army that the US Air Force has neither the resources nor the inclination to provide the sort of fixed-wing assistance to the kinds of remote locations it often has to operate in.  The Air Force does very well with inter-theater airlift, but once it gets to the major logistics hubs in a war zone, getting it sent out to the various operation locations has generally been a real chore.  Helicopters, though extremely useful, have proven to still be a very limited platform.  This was the entire reason behind the development for the V-22 Osprey family, which the USMC has put into service to perform the intra-theater airlift mission, among other things.  The USMC, apparently oblivious to the Army's numerous failed dealings with the US Air Force, has wondered why the Army hasn't jumped on the V-22 bandwagon like the other major services.

The answer to that is wings.

Since its inception, the Air Force has pretty much laid claim to everything with wings that the Army had operated.  It is definitely important to note that the US Army has, however, held on to fixed wing aircraft to perform non-combat and very limited combat support functions.  This arrangement was largely formalized in the mid-1960s, largely after a debate surrounding intra-theater airlift.  During the development of the Air Assault Division concept (the term "Air Assault" then became "Airmobile," before becoming "Air Assault" again in the 1980s) the US Army planned to develop units with organic airmobile and airborne capabilities.  Small fixed-wing aircraft were to provide a limited organic capability to perform airborne missions.  The aircraft chosen for this mission was the DeHavilland Canada 4 (DHC-4) Caribou.

The Air Force immediately took umbrage at this, suggesting that the role could easily be filled by their new C-130.  The Army disagreed, suggesting that the C-130 was still too big and heavy to perform the airlift mission in the sorts of austere environments they had in mind.  In response, the Air Force decided to reinvest in an aircraft they had previously decided to retire, the C-123.  After much wrangling, it was decided that the C-123 could indeed perform the intended mission and that the Air Force should be in charge of all such operations.  The CV-2s, as the DHC-4s had been designated, were passed to the Air Force entirely by 1966, and were redesignated as C-7s.

The C-123 and C-7s served throughout the US experience in southeast Asia, but were largely passed to the Air National Guard or otherwise divested thereafter.  Once again the US Army found itself with the requirement for intra-theater airlift.  Purchases of the Shorts C-23B for the Army National Guard did little to provide a real capability.

So, in the early 2000s, the Army decided to take matters into its own hands again with the Future Cargo Aircraft (FCA) program.  As it became clear that the FCA wasn't going away, the Air Force suddenly found the requirements for a Light Cargo Aircraft (LCA) program.  Legal obligations to form joint programs when two programs exist with similar or identical requirements led to the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program, which the Air Force promptly took over.  They reduced the scale of the initial buys, shunted the C-27J into mixed Air National Guard-Army National Guard units, and after promising to defend the aircraft and its capability, turned around and proposed a budget that would see the entire fleet divested over the next 2 years. 

As most people are already aware, official histories can be sort of a mixed bag when it comes to their content.  I've been running into this a lot at work and while working on other projects.  Its not necessarily the fault of the authors.  One would hardly expect an official history of just about anything to highly negatives or be deeply introspective.  That's a matter for internal study often held back from the general public.

In many cases the reasons for doing something is the result of the the need to create a solution to a problem quickly.  Its not unreasonable to have multiple solutions in development as well, in the likely even that one doesn't pan out.  When attempted solutions don't pan out, its not entirely unreasonable to want to describe it in a way so as to avoid the suggestion that all those involved weren't wasting their time and often other peoples' money.

With regards to the US government, and especially the military, however, the dichotomy between the how the material is presented in official histories versus how it plays out in the often classified documentation can be stark.  It can also be sort of darkly humorous.  Here 2 selections from work I've done recently:

Operation Carolina Moon: You can get the full story here.  Jacob Van Staaveren mentions this operation in his official history, Gradual Failure: The Air War Over North Vietnam: 1965–1966.  His reference to "failure," however, has to deal with restrictive rules of engagement.  He describes Operation Carolina Moon as "The most creative bridge assault [against the Thanh Hoa Bridge]."  No mention is made of the fact that the Tactical Air Warfare Center and concluded that the operation was very unlikely to succeed, only being convinced to proceed because "Alternative proposals apparently offered a lesser chance of success."

Operation Commando Lava:  The profile developed for GlobalSecurity.org contains a mention of the circumstances surrounding the end of this operation.  Van Staaveren's Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1960–1968 does note that the operation was unsuccessful and that results were largely inconclusive. What is left out is that the Air Force was so disenchanted with the program that it essentially decided to forget about it so completely that even relatively high level commanders were left in the dark at the end. Here is the text, verbatim, from a message from Seventh Air Force to Pacific Air Forces in December 1967, asking for advice on how to proceed:

"1. (S) In early June 1967, the Commando Lava project hit DPL like a typhoon, leaving in its wake no fewer than 60 pieces of Top Secret correspondence, a completed Test and Evaluation Plan, a Test Report, and a published OPlan.  All this and no mud!

2. (S) It now appears that Commando Lava has been laid to rest.  If so, many of the related classified documents can be CD'd.  It would be highly desirable to weed out the entire file, but if the concept is still alive we should keep the basic plan and some of the most pertinent correspondence.

3. (U) We cannot determine at 7AF level whether the concept itself is really a dead issue.  Attached message seeks this information from action office at PACAF."

At the end of June 2011, Tom Ricks made a post on his blog The Best Defense about how unmanned drones were changing warfare. I sent him an email soon there after suggesting that a lot of things had changed, and that armed drones had in fact been around in theory and in practice for some time prior.  He posted a very brief overview of armed drone initiatives in the 1960s and 1970s, including the service in the US Navy of sub-hunting QH-50 DASH, on his blog.

It was sad to see today that the Foreign Policy, possibly in its print edition as well, has published a "10 Things You Didn't Know About Drones" by the Council on Foreign Relations' Dr. Micah Zenko, in which a similar and still false comment is made.

Dr. Zenko starts off his list with "The first armed drones were created to get Osama bin Laden."  Osama Bin Laden was born in 1957 and the QH-50A Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter (DASH) entered service in 1962, making this a difficult proposition.

Even if you wanted to suggest that the first armed drones intended to strike at land targets were developed to get Bin Laden, this is still false.  The US Navy, US Army, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA; new the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA) experimented with other uses for the QH-50 platform during the 1960s and 1970s, including strike targets on land.  ARPA even evaluated some unarmed and armed prototypes in Vietnam as part of the Nite Gazelle and Nite Panther programs.  Not to be left out, the USAF also looked into armed drones, even test firing AGM-65 Maverick missiles from modified BGM-34A drones in 1971-72 and other weapons, such as first generation laser guided bombs, from BGM-34B drones in 1973-74.

After clearly not digging deep enough to understand just how "Scottish" the "British" Army is, I figure I should go back to some "home turf" and talk about the Haqqanis and national identity in their part of the world.  I actually wrote about this back in 2009 for the Common Ground News Service.  After a decade of direct interaction in this part of the world and a long history dating back to the 1950s of various levels of interaction by the US, its amazing that the US government still views the region in terms of Westphalian nation states and cohesive national identity.

Last August, the Washington Post ran a great piece by Rajiv Chandrasekaran called "In Afghanistan, the rise and fall of ‘Little America", which did a great job poking gaping holes in the absurd notions of Afghanistan's "gold age" of cosmopolitanism in the 1960s.  As it is now with many successes, much of what is touted was limited to Afghanistan's few urban centers, with little to no relevance to the majority of the population.

Still, the US cannot seem to wrap its head around the fact that Afghanistan is dramatically different from the United States, now or two hundred years ago.  No where else is this more obvious than with the Haqqanis.  Almost every time I hear some official commentary on the nature of the Haqqanis it makes me fume.  It is even a matter of official policy to refer to them as the "Haqqani Network," making a collection of tribal allegiances based largely on familial linkages, a relatively mundane thing for this part of the world, sound like SPECTRE or HYDRA.  It even makes them sound like the Al Qaeda of old, a notion further fueled by the allegations of links to that organization (if these guys hadn't bumped into Bin Laden in the decades he was in Afghanistan, it would be surprising) and various members of the Haqqani clan having delusions of grandeur (also not uncommon in this part of the world) when it comes to establishing feudal dominion over large swaths of territory.

In a leaked cable just recently, US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker further shows how wrapped up the US government is in looking at things as they feel they should be, rather than how they are.  Crocker's cable specifically talks about the Haqqanis and about "havens" in Pakistan, as if they were members of the People's Army of Vietnam in Laos or Cambodia.  Crocker's word choice is clearly supposed to evoke this comparison and it is entirely false.  You can't call it a "haven" if that's where the people in question live.

The Haqqanis are not, as official reports would indicate, "Pakistani-based Afghanis."  They are Pashtuns.  While the center of their influence revolves around Khost, which happens today to be in what is broadly understood to be Afghanistan, they and their kin and allies live on both sides of a border they could care less about.  It is unlikely they think of themselves as Pakistanis or Afghanis, or even Pashtuns for that matter.  They're no doubt Haqqanis first and foremost, as that is what matters.  Referring to people as Afghanis and Pakistanis might be useful for the US government (otherwise how would you track the multitude of diverse groups), but it has little bearing on the situation there.

What would really help our AfPak strategy is understanding that the people who understand that there is a border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, for all intents and purposes an imaginary line on a piece of paper, are limited to our government and those in Kabul and Islamabad.  Those in Islamabad and Kabul, for what its worth, seem to have a better understanding of just how irrelevant such a thing is for the majority of the people living on either side of it.  The line is an amazingly modern creation too, being the result of an agreement in 1893 by an official of the British colonial authority in India and the Amir of Afghanistan, who despite his recognition as the center of authority by the British, probably had about the same influence as the current Kabul government. 

The Washington Post ran a story today in which they looked at the revival of Scottish secessionists and the very real possibility that Scotland might become an independent nation like the Republic of Ireland in the near future.

The article does a good job outlining the various and complex issues that might spring from such a decision at this point in time.  The desire of the Scottish National Party to remove Scotland from NATO and perhaps even the British Commonwealth are no small matters.  The article points out that with full independence the SNP would probably look into "...withdrawing from NATO and unwinding Scottish regiments from Britain’s military forces overseas."

While the look of bases in Scotland is an important matter, the Scottish components of the British Army had shrunk dramatically over the last decade.  There are no longer multiple "Scottish regiments" as the article would suggest.  Following a 2004 decision, met with much public outcry, the remaining Scottish regiments were folded into a single regiment, the Royal Regiment of Scotland.  Each of its seven battalions traces its history and lineage to a previous Scottish regiment, but that does not mean that there are multiple Scottish regiments still in existence. The British Army also retains a single regiment representing the Irish (the Royal Irish Regiment) and the Welsh (the Royal Welsh).

I've also looked into and have been assured that the Scots Guards is not understood to be a Scottish regiment (nor are the Irish or Welsh Guards considered to be Irish or Welsh regiments), being a Guards element rather than a line regiment (despite having an operational battalion). The Royal Regiment of Scotland, however, is one of the largest regiments currently in the British Army (the other being the very simply named The Rifles), so the force structure of the British Army might still see significant changes should the RRS cease to exist.

UPDATE- So apparently, it might not be as clear cut.  The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, an armoured regiment of the British Army, refer to themselves as the "senior Scottish regiment."  This would mean that the Scots Guards infantry regiment is probably also in the category, despite its special nature as a guard regiment.  I realize that there are also probably "Scottish" combat support and combat service support regiments (or however things like signals and engineers are terms in the British Army) in Scotland, even if they do not have a Scottish lineage per say (which would require "untangling" if Scotland ever became independent).  Shows how much I understand about British Army organization and lineage.  If anyone can conclusively clarify this, please let me know.

So I stumbled upon this piece, reprinted by Salon, where Noam Chomsky talks as he generally does about the decline of America.  I'll be frank about the fact that I generally don't agree with a lot of what Chomsky says, but I don't necessarily disagree with all of his points.  I think America could generally do with being a bit more humble and no giving a platform to people who would boo the golden rule or their figureheads.  On the other hand I think Chomsky and his supporters could do with refocusing their arguments from within the world as it is, rather than  through the lens of how they would like the world to be.

Chomsky's piece contain numerous and important historical accuracy fails.  What's ironic is that if he had gotten the points correct he might well have made a stronger point. What Chomsky seems to prove is that even the most educated Americans still have a distorted view of US involvement in Southeast Asia, regardless of what their personal views on what happened.  He seems to this day to be so inflamed by the US involvement in Vietnam that he would like it to have been the focus in the region that it was in domestic politics and activism. 

Chomsky starts his third paragraph off with the following:

"The prime target was South Vietnam. The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the Pacific region during World War II, including the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Right from the first sentence he is wrong.  The US government was generally unsure about where to make their "stand" against Communism in Southeast Asia, but politically volatile Laos seemed like the best bet right into 1961.  Since Chomsky appears to be talking specifically about bombing places (though he doesn't specifically say that, in what is a case of just bad argumentation), it should also bear mentioning that the US deployed strike aircraft to strike Laos six months before they deployed aircraft to South Vietnam.  Furthermore, an entire joint US Army/USMC task force was deployed to Northern Thailand in May 1961 as a show of force related to the crisis in Laos.

Also, if you're going to talk about US operations and US support to the operations of South Vietnam, than the "aggression" visited on North Vietnam should be considered to have started at the same time as South Vietnam.  While the US might not have been bombing the country, it was assisting South Vietnam conduct covert operations against the North for some time prior to 1965.  It should also be noted that by 1954, the US was footing the majority of the bill for French Union forces in what was still Indochina, and members of the US Office of Strategic Services had been interacting with Southeast Asian guerrillas since the Second World War.  To say "South Vietnam" was a primary target simply belies the long history of US operations in the region and the complex factors that affected US policy there, right or wrong.

Chomsky doesn't stop there in getting the timeline jumbled.  Closer to the end of his piece he says:

In the case of Vietnam, the concern was that the virus of independent development might infect Indonesia...

The Truman administration was notably resistant initially to the idea of France returning to her colonies, as had been FDR.  It was similarly resistant to the idea of the Dutch returning to their colonies.  In spite of that, Indonesian independence from the Dutch was acknowledged in 1949, before the war in Korea really changed the minds of many US politicians about supporting governments like the French in Indochina as a check against Communism in the region.

It is impossible to say that US concern in Vietnam was based on US concern about Indonesia.  The US was already heavily engrossed in Southeast Asia before Sukarno was deposed from power in Indonesia and there was any concern that the more friendly Suharto government would fall.  Chomsky even makes mention of the Suharto coup in 1965, somehow knowing the year of this event, but dismisses the fact that a left-leaning government had persisted there since 1949.  Apparently the US was concerned between 1949 and 1965 that independence movements in Vietnam would lead to similar movements in Indonesia, where a non-aligned left-leaning government was already in residence.  The US was, in fact, so concerned about Indonesia on its own that they covertly supported unsuccessful efforts to unseat the left-leaning leadership in that country in the 1950s.

...things have just been a little busy.  I'm surprised at how much work it can be to keep an eye out for good items too.  Between work and other things there hasn't been a whole lot of time.

So, I figure I'll take the time to do a little of what is generally referred to by Communist regimes as "self-criticism."  I won't go so far as to purge myself out of my own Party...er, blog, hehe.

I did, however, make a not-so-small historical accuracy fail of my own recently.  I wrote a guest piece for Tom Ricks' blog The Best Defense, on changes in the structure of the US Army.  It was pretty well received I'll add and I was definitely happy with it.

Someone, however, very rightly called me out on the following passage:

"The Force XXI concept was still being fleshed out as the Soviet Union crumbled and in the end the decision was made to not fully convert all divisions to the new structure."

Earlier in the month, Wired.com's "Danger Room" announced the existence of Joint Special Operations Task Force - Gulf Cooperation Council (JSOTF-GCC), a unit assigned to Special Operations Command, Central (SOCCENT).  I'll definitely admit that Wired brought it to my attention and that they were probably the first to highlight it, but when they said that "The U.S. military has not previously acknowledged the existence of the team...", that's just false.

Just watched the A-Team movie (2010).  I like the movie.  I think they captured a lot of the feel of the old TV show and its goofy fun to watch.  They definitely captured creator Stephen J. Cannell's belief that the show was essentially a live-action cartoon.

What they didn't do for the movie was put any serious energy into worrying about getting basic details regarding US Army units correct.  In the movie's opening sequence Hannibal Smith and B.A. Baracus quote bits of the Ranger Creed before bringing up that they're both affiliated with the prestigious 75th Ranger Regiment.  At least B.A. was, the back-story in the film is that he was discharged. 

However, it seems difficult to buy into that when B.A. says that he was in the Regiment's 4th Battalion.  There is no 4th Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.  A Special Troops Battalion was activated in 2007, but this is not "4th Battalion."   

The IMDB goofs page for the movie states inaccurately that the 4th Battalion is a training unit (along with 5th and 6th Battalions).  The 4th, 5th, and 6th Ranger Training Battalions are not part of the 75th Ranger Regiment and do not draw lineage and honors from the World War II-era 4th and 5th Ranger Battalions or later 4th, 5th, and 6th Ranger Infantry Battalions.  These units are part of the Ranger Training Brigade at the US Army Infantry School (the personnel assigned to these units wear the USAIS distinctive unit insignia).  The lineage and honors of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Ranger Infantry Battalions were consolidated with that of the 75th Ranger Regiment in 1986.

After the movie progresses to the inciting incident that will eventually land the team in jail, there is another instance of serious historical inaccuracy.  In Iraq, the 4-star general, who to be historically accurate would have had to have been commander of US Forces - Iraq (USF-I), is wearing this patch:

The BBC's News Magazine today included a story on the deployment of UK military and intelligence personnel to Libya during first Operation Deference and later during Operation Ellamy (the latter being the name for the UK's participation in first in the US-led Operation Odyssey Dawn and then in NATO's Operation Unified Protector).  The article is pretty good and it has some good detail and anecdotes about the experience of the members of the Special Air Service and MI6 in Libya. 

The problem with the article, however, is this suggestion, right in the title, that the deployment was a secret.  It was not even an open secret, like the deployment of US special operations and intelligence personnel to Libya. It was an open fact, stated publicly by the UK government last spring.

The allegation that the deployment was "secret" comes from the fact that as late as 17 April 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron was saying things like:

"What we've said is there is no question of invasion or an occupation - this is not about Britain putting boots on the ground. That is not what we're about here..." Source

Two days later on 19 April, however, Foreign Secretary William Hague was publicly quoted as saying that the UK was sending military personnel to advise and assist the forces of what was then known as the National Transitional Council (NTC) (Source).  From Hague's comments, it seems pretty clear that not only was it the view of the UK government that this deployment was within the purview of UN Resolution 1973, but was also within the scope of PM Cameron's comments about not committing to a sustained campaign.